July 23, 2015

Paper by Professors Alexandra Boltasseva and Vladimir Shalaev chosen as cover article in Optica journal

Optica cover page
Professor Alexandra Boltasseva
Professor Alexandra Boltasseva
Professor Vladimir Shalaev
Professor Vladimir Shalaev
Visiting scholar Marcello Ferrera
Visiting scholar Marcello Ferrera
Graduate Student Nathaniel Kinsey
Graduate Student Nathaniel Kinsey
Graduate Student Clayton DeVault
Graduate Student Clayton DeVault
Graduate Student Jongbum Kim
Graduate Student Jongbum Kim
The paper was authored by Professors Alexandra Boltasseva and Vladimir Shalaev, visiting scholar Marcello Ferrera, and graduate students Nathaniel Kinsey, Clayton DeVault, and Jongbum Kim. The title is "Epsilon-near-zero Al-doped ZnO for ultrafast switching at telecom wavelengths". Optica is a new, high-impact journal dedicated to publishing only the most impactful work in optics.

A paper authored by Professors Alexandra Boltasseva and Vladimir Shalaev, visiting scholar Marcello Ferrera, and graduate students Nathaniel Kinsey, Clayton DeVault, and Jongbum Kim has been chosen as the cover article for the Optica journal. The title of the paper is "Epsilon-near-zero Al-doped ZnO for ultrafast switching at telecom wavelengths". Optica is a new, high-impact journal dedicated to publishing only the most impactful work in optics, which testifies to the importance of the discovery made by ECE researchers.

More information about their research:

Exponentially rising demands on our communication infrastructure are forcing scientists in both academia and industry to investigate new ways to meet the speeds required. To create compact, fast, efficient, and cheap devices researchers at Purdue are looking towards the field of plasmonics which combines traditional optics with metals to achieve nanometer scale light confinement.

At the heart of these devices is a material whose properties can be changed at will, enabling modulation (i.e. a dynamic material). Researchers at Purdue have begun to study the transparent conducting oxide material aluminum doped zinc oxide (AZO) which is a promising material due to its current use in industry for touchscreens, flexible displays, and solar cell electrical connections. Using an all-optical experiment, researchers have found that a 350 nm thick film of AZO is capable of producing large change in both the reflection and transmission of light (40%/30% respectively) with an extremely fast decay time of 88 fs. This ultrafast recovery can enable all-optical switches to achieve speeds in excess of 10 THz which is critical for future high-performance all-optical communication networks. The result is believed to be due to the unique procedure Purdue researchers use to grow the AZO films which promote defects in the material which enables the material to have drastically enhanced recombination of electrons and holes (more than 1,000 times faster than bulk ZnO) as well as increased modulation due to operation at the transition between metal and dielectric properties (epsilon-near-zero regime).

Research Article

Supplementary Material